- Tomasz Rydelek
8 years of war in Yemen.
September 21st of this year marked a full eight years since the Houthis seized the country's capital Sanaa, officially starting Yemen's civil war, which represents the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II and has already claimed nearly 400,000 lives. The year 2022 has brought the prospect of an end to the war, while the major external player Saudi Arabia is looking for ways out of the conflict. Let's find out which actors, forces, and motivations played the biggest part in the disaster of the Yemeni Civil War.
Dancing on the Heads of Snakes
On the eve of the Arab Spring, Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had already ruled the country for more than 30 years. He came to power in 1978 when Yemen was divided into the current Arab Republic of Yemen in the north and the Marxist-Leninist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. The division was a legacy of the 19th-century British-Turkish rivalry, during which the Turks subjugated Yemen's north and the British the south.
Colonel Saleh was only 35 years old when he became president of northern Yemen in 1978. He proved to be a very skillful politician. Using state assets, he skillfully maneuvered between tribes, the military, and other groups of influence, constantly changing alliances. The nature of Saleh's rule is best expressed in his own words - in an interview with the foreign press, he stated that ruling Yemen was like “dancing on the heads of snakes.” The culmination of this dance was to bring about a unified Yemen in 1990, which was - of course - headed by him.
Saleh ruled a unified Yemen using a divide-and-rule strategy. He pitted individual groups that threatened his power against each other. He seemed to have mastered the snake-head dance to perfection, but this spawned 3 of his most dangerous enemies.
First of all, Saleh, who hailed from the north, did not inspire confidence in the people of the south. Southerners were unhappy not so much with the unification of the two Yemeni states, but with the way it was done. They believed that Saleh and the northern tribes had appropriated the resources of southern Yemen for themselves. The fierce dispute was over land in the south being handed over to northern tribes, the lack of investment in the port of Aden, and most importantly, oil. As much as 80% of the country's entire oil reserves were located in the formerly communist south, but oil export revenues went mainly to Saleh.
Saleh tackled the problem of southern separatism in a rather peculiar way: he turned to Yemen's veterans of the Afghan jihad. Saleh greeted the Mujahideen coming from Yemen with open arms. Some of them had become radicalized while in Afghanistan. However, for Saleh that was not a problem. Saleh did not even have to strongly encourage the returning Mujahideen to fight the Communists. Earlier in the 1960s, the Communists seized land and property from many of their parents. Thus, the Mujahideen saw the fight against Communists as making up for old wrongs suffered by their families.
Saleh himself was not a religious radical and treated the Islamists primarily as a tool to break the resistance in southern Yemen. He did not consider the idea that Islamists could threaten his power. Saleh was playing with fire and… this proved to be a mistake. Due to the war in Afghanistan, many of the Yemeni mujahideen were often in close contact with Al Qaeda.
However, the southern separatists and the Yemeni jihadists were not Saleh's only opponents. In the 1990s, another organization began to form in the north of Yemen that the world would soon know as Ansar Allah or - as others say - Houthi.
The Houthi Rise and the Saleh Dance
The genesis of the Houthi Movement is often explained through the prism of Saudi-Iranian rivalry. The Houthis are compared to Hezbollah, and their role is reduced to another pro-Iranian militia representing Tehran's interests in the region. However, such simplifications are not justified. The origins of the Houthi Movement are much more complicated and have three main factors.
First is faith. In 1992, an organization called "the Believing Youth" was established in the Saada province in the north of Yemen. It was a Zaidite religious organization and Zaidism is one of the factions of Shiism. Shiites make up between 25 and 40% of Yemen's population according to various estimates, while the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Shiites are actually Zaidites. The "Believing Youth" has set itself the goal of promoting the revival of Zaidism and combating Salafist influence that is supported by the state and Saudi Arabia.
This was overlaid by a political motive, which can be summarized as a conflict between the old order and the new. The old was represented by the Sajjids, that is, individuals legitimized by a lineage descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Until the fall of the monarchy in 1962, it was the Sajjid families that constituted the ruling class of northern Yemen. With the advent of the Republic, there was also a new order in which the Sajjids lost their former influence. Thus Saleh himself, the leader of Yemen's new elite, was a Zaydite, but not a Sajjid.
Last was the crucial socioeconomic factor. It seems that the Houthis' success was primarily by the country's economic situation - ubiquitous corruption and the socioeconomic marginalization of Saada province - where the "Believing Youth" had just been established. The slogans of social justice and the fight against corruption preached by the Houthis also allowed them to reach out to people outside the Zaydi circle and Shiite circles in general, it also won them partial support from Sunnis.
A turning point in the activities of the Believing Youth was the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Going on the wave of anti-American sentiment in the country, a radical faction in the Believing Youth organization, the so-called Houthi, gained a dominant position. The faction’s name was taken from its leader, Hussein al Houthi.
It was then in 2003 that Hussein al Houthi began organizing anti-American demonstrations in the north of the country. Their indispensable element was shouting "death to America" and "death to Israel." Anti-government slogans criticizing President Saleh soon began to appear at the protests as well. A confrontation between the Houthi Movement and President Saleh was now only a matter of time.
In the summer of 2004, Saleh’s government troops launched their first offensive against the Houthis with the goal to arrest Hussein al-Houthi. Ultimately, Hussein was killed a few months later, but the Houthis were not defeated. Hussein's brother, Abdul Malik al Houthi, became the movement's new leader and continued the fight. Despite government troops carrying out six offensives against the Houthis between 2004 and 2010, they failed to smash the rebel forces. President Saleh's forces faced the same problems as the Ottoman Empire's troops in the 19th century or the Egyptian Expeditionary Corps during the civil war in the 1960s when they had to fight in difficult mountainous terrain against small, but mobile Zaydi troops. And just like the Turks and Egyptians, Saleh was losing. To make matters worse, President Saleh's actions only intensified Houthi resistance and increased the local population's support for the rebels.
On the eve of the Arab Spring, President Saleh's power was shaking in its foundations. The Houthis threatened him in the north, separatists in the south, while Arabian Peninsula Al Qaeda cells were active throughout the country. Recent allies were now turning against him. Eventually, Saleh was ousted in late 2011 in a wave of Arab Spring protests. His place in the presidential seat was taken by Mansur Hadi, a former vice president.
However, Saleh did not lay down his arms. He decided to dance on the heads of the snakes one last time. Using his influence in the so-called General People's Congress and in the army which continued to wield considerable influence, he began plotting against President Hadi. Saleh quickly found a rather unexpected ally, the disgruntled Houthis who were almost completely excluded from power-sharing in 2011.
On September 16, 2014, Houthi fighters entered the capital, Sa'ana. After 5 days of fighting, they took complete control of the city. Such a quick victory was probably due to Saleh who ordered troops loyal to himself not to fight the rebels. Despite the Houthis' seizure of the capital, the violence did not stop. Eventually, on January 22, 2015, President Hadi resigned and was placed under house arrest. The Houthis dissolved parliament and formed a so-called Revolutionary Committee to hold some temporary power in the country.
However in February, Hadi escaped house arrest and traveled to Aden, the former capital of southern Yemen. He accused the Houthis of staging a coup and announced that his faction would continue its fight. The Houthis responded by marching into southern Yemen with the goal to break up the remnants of President Hadi’s loyal troops.. Army units loyal to Saleh also joined the Houthi offensive and, like a steamroller, the combined forces swept through the south of the country occupying Taiz on March 24 and entering Aden a day later. A desperate President Hadi left the city and went to Riyadh asking Saudi Arabia for desperately needed help.
Saudi intervention
March 26, 2015. Saudi Arabia launches its intervention into Yemen. Although it has been going on for nearly 8 years with several other countries also involved, it has not been able to achieve much success. Although the Houthis have been pushed out of southern Yemen, they still control the capital and most of the country. Why did the Saudis decide to intervene in Yemen in the first place, and why did it end not only in a political, but also a humanitarian disaster?
Saudi Arabia's foreign policy toward Yemen has always been subordinated to one main goal, the prevention of a united and strong Yemen. According to a popular story, the founder of the Saudi state, Ibn Saud, while on his deathbed, was said to have warned his sons to do everything to ensure that Yemen remained a weak country. Only when viewed from this perspective - the desire to maintain Yemen as a weak state - are we able to understand Saudi support for political forces that Riyadh would otherwise consider its arch-enemies.
During the two wars between northern and southern Yemen in 1972 and 1979, the Saudis clearly sided with the northern republic fearing the destabilization of the Arabian Peninsula by the Aden communists. However in 1994, after the reunification of Yemen, when the same communists tried to declare independence and uproot the south from Saleh's rule, the Sauds supported the communists without hesitation by sending shipments of weapons to the port of Aden.
After 2011, the Saudis have not changed their policy and continue to try to play the various Yemeni parties against each other. Thus, one of Saudi Arabia's key allies in Yemen is now the Al Islah party which is a regional branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is despite the fact that the Brotherhood's activities are banned in Saudi Arabia itself, where the Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization.
Saudi policy toward Yemen was summed up very well by the former US ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine: “backing everyone and anyone to keep the pot bubbling—never boiling, never less than a simmer.”
According to Saudi Arabia's official narrative, the intervention in Yemen was dictated by the need to protect the "legitimate government of President Hadi" from aggression by the Houthis who are directly controlled by Iran. In this way, the Saudis have tried to portray the war in Yemen as a conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran that’s seeking to destabilize the region using pro-Iranian militias. However, this narrative has little to do with reality.
As mentioned above, the Houthi emerged as a grassroots movement that had its roots in Yemen's complicated history. It's hard to say that there is any special religious bond between the Houthi and Iran because although the Houthi are Shiites, they are Zaydites. On the other hand, Iran's official religion is Twelver Shiism.
There is no evidence to suggest that the Iranians were behind the rise of the Houthi Movement, just as there is no evidence of significant Iranian support before 2015. It would be naïve to claim that Iran did not help the Houthis at all, but the Saudi narrative about the scale of that help and the closeness of the Houthi-Tehran relationship was certainly exaggerated. Crucial to the Houthis' success was not Iran's alleged arms shipments, but the alliance with President Saleh that the Houthis formed in 2012.
Saleh incited some troops against the new President Hadi and also rearmed the Houthis. According to a 2017 UN report, as much as 68% of Yemen's pre-war armaments fell into the hands of the Houthis and Saleh's men. It was also troops loyal to Saleh who first played a key role in the Houthis' seizure of the Yemeni capital in the fall of 2014 and later helped them capture much of southern Yemen in the spring of 2015.
Paradoxically, it was only after the Saudi intervention in Yemen that cooperation between Iran and the Houthis began to intensify. After 2015, more and more information emerged suggesting large-scale arms smuggling into Yemen by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranians themselves also directly admitted to transferring technical know-how to the Houthis, such as for the construction of drones and ballistic missiles which the Houthis have begun using since 2016 in regular attacks against Saudi Arabia.
Yemen and the Regional Balance of Power
The real reasons for the Saudi intervention in Yemen are primarily to be found in the changes that took place in Saudi foreign policy after the Arab Spring protests of late 2010 and early 2011. Saudi Arabia reacted very harshly to the Arab Spring protests, perceiving them as an existential threat to the Saudi monarchy. The Saudis feared that the protests that swept across the region could threaten not only the Saudi monarchy, but also lead to a new balance of power in the Middle East.
Instead of passively watching the protests, Saudi Arabia began to take increasingly assertive steps to defend the status quo. In 2011, Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in Bahrain pacifying anti-government protests. And in 2013, it financially supported the coup in Egypt which resulted in the military's ouster of President Mursi who was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi intervention in Yemen should be viewed precisely in the context of the Kingdom's broader post-2011 foreign policy changes and the construction of a much more aggressive Saudi foreign policy as a response to the challenges of the Arab Spring. The face of this new policy has been Mohammed bin Salman who took over as defense minister in January 2015 when his father ascended to the Saudi throne.
The Saudis supported Hadi and his assumption of power was expected to guarantee the preservation of Saudi influence in Yemen.
However, the Saudi plan to control Yemen through Hadi was threatened by the Houthis who first seized Saana and then forcibly tried to crack down on Hadi himself. The Saudis intervened in Yemen not so much because of their belief in the exaggerated links between the Houthis and Iran, but mainly because the Houthis - by attacking Hadi - threatened Saudi influence in Yemen. Sir John Jenkins, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, summed it up well: "The Saudis did not fear the Houthis because they were sent by the Iranians, but because they were out of control”
The Saudis could not allow the Houthis to threaten a favorable balance of power. Saudi interests in Yemen were simply too important. Located off the Yemeni coast, the Bab al Mandab Strait is crucial for shipping. The Saudis also have serious plans for Yemen's Mahra province through which they have wanted to build an oil pipeline since the 1990s. Such a connection would give the Saudis access to the Arabian Sea and allow them to export oil to Asia bypassing the Strait of Hormuz which in a conflict situation with Iran could very easily be blocked. Moreover, military success was expected to boost the ratings of then-Defense Minister Mohammed Bin Salman and strengthen his image as a strong and effective leader.
Despite initial successes in driving the Houthis out of Aden and much of southern Yemen, the Saudi intervention in Yemen was ultimately a political and humanitarian disaster.
Exit Strategy
In December 2017, probably at the urging of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, President Saleh switched sides again. He broke the alliance with the Houthis and, with the help of troops loyal to him, tried to take control of the capital. A few days later, Saleh's dance was over. The former president was killed in an ambush and the Houthi became the undisputed rulers of the north.
In contrast, the pro-government camp and the international coalition began to disintegrate. This was the result of the rivalry between President Hadi and the southern separatists. In 2017, the separatists formed the Southern Transitional Council with the goal of gaining, if not independence, then at least a large degree of autonomy for southern Yemen.
The Southern Transitional Council has received support from the United Arab Emirates which began arming and training separatist troops. In January 2018, separatist troops entered Aden pushing forces loyal to President Hadi out of the city.
In 2019, the United Arab Emirates formally withdrew from the coalition. However, they have not evacuated all their troops out of Yemen. Among others, the Emirates still occupy the strategically located island of Socotra and continue to support separatists who regularly clash with government forces.
The Saudi intervention has been a complete failure. Seven years after the intervention began, the situation in Yemen represents the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II for which the Saudis bear primary responsibility. According to UN estimates, more than 377,000 Yemenis have died since 2015, 60% of them due to lack of food, water, or medical care. Between 2015 and 2018 alone, an estimated 85,000 Yemeni children died in the famine.
Despite massive civilian casualties and billions of dollars, the Saudis are far from achieving the stated goals of the intervention. In many ways, the geopolitical situation is worse for Saudi Arabia now than it was in 2015. While the Houthis' cooperation with Iran was severely limited before 2015, the Saudi intervention pushed the Houthis right into Tehran's arms. With Iranian help, the Houthis have built up a sizable arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles capable of effectively reaching Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure.
With the departure of Donald Trump from the White House, Mohammed bin Salman lost one of his key allies. Also, increasing pressure from the international community on Riyadh to end the war began in 2020. And so… the Saudis began looking for a way out of the Yemen debacle.
The Saudis started peace talks with the Houthis and tried to resolve the dispute between Hadi and the Southern Transitional Council, eventually making concessions to the southern separatists. In April 2022, President Hadi resigned from his post and the one-man presidential office was replaced by an 8-member Presidential Council in which half of the seats were given to the south of the country.
April 2022 also saw a turning point in the talks with Houthi. The Saudis and Houthis announced a ceasefire, and the 2015 maritime, land, and air blockade of Yemen began to be lifted slowly. The ceasefire has already been extended several times and, despite some disputes, is still in force today. At the same time, thanks to the mediation of the UN, peace talks are underway with the aim of working out an agreement to finally end the war in Yemen.
The Saudi intervention in Yemen is inevitably coming to an end. However, it is difficult to say what this country will look like after the Saudi withdrawal. The Houthis insist on maintaining the unity of North and South Yemen. However, representatives of the Southern Transitional Council, although formally participating in peace talks, have repeatedly argued in previous years for independence or at least a large amount of autonomy for the south of the country. The Emirates strongly support the Southerners in this endeavor.
Therefore there may be a situation where the Saudis reach a peace agreement with the Houthi and withdraw from Yemen, but the civil war, instead of ending, will only enter a new phase with the Houthis on one side and the Southern Transitional Council on the other. And Yemen, as requested by Ibn Saud, will continue to be weak.
Sources:
C. Victoria, Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes;
H. Lackner Yemen in Crisis;
C. Tynan, Saudi Interventions in Yemen. A Historical Comparison of Ontological Insecurity
Congressional Research Service, Yemen: Civil War and Regional Intervention
